Saturday, August 3, 2013

Writing Advice

This entry marks my one hundred and sixty posts since I started this blog! When I started writing this string of rambling prose I never imagined that I could be this garrulous.

The blog began with a promise to myself that I would post something every single week, but not spend more than ninety minutes on it and not a nanosecond more. As Lord Kelvin once said in response to a criticism , "Speed of attack preserves one from errors that arise from excessive contemplation." So too with me: I would rather be called out for a mistake made in haste than confirming that I am an idiot. Now I spend less than half that amount of time.

My original intent was to use this blog to explain, mostly to myself, how and why I do this strange writing thing in my dark and lonely room and thereby expiate some of the mixed emotions that accompany creating and delivering a decent story. Later I thought that, along with this process of sometimes excruciating self examination, I'd pass along a few helpful hints based on my own idiosyncratic experiences. To my utter surprise I found an audience eager to get an insight into my [miserable] writer's life. What's more I learned that my concerns were more common than I imagined.

Aside from my blogs about the self-doubt that always surrounds me when I write, the most popular blog for a long time was my Ten Stages of Story Development that I later modified with Step Eleven of the Ten Step Process when I discovered ten steps were never enough to finish a story. I also documented going through the process in my January and February 2011 blogs just to show that the process I outlined could be followed to produce a salable story (it did!)

I've also mused about the joys of story acceptances and the pain of rejections, rejections, rejections. I've talked about plotting, submitting too early, and all the little demons that afflict all writers regardless of experience (What! You thought you were the only one who had these problems?)

All things considered maintaining the weekly blog has been a healthful and satisfying endeavor for these hundred and sixty blog posts. I hope you found them helpful, if only to know that there is someone out there equally suffering from the writing affliction.